In 2021, the American Health Organization (AHA) issued a statement about the importance of good healthcare distribution. 270,000 doctors and over 2 million caregivers expressed how medical distribution is vital for their ability to do their jobs and save lives. It’s also an essential component in running a financially viable medical business.

Experts predict that the medical supplies industry will continue to grow by 4.5% CAGR, eventually reaching $192.95 billion by 2028. With that revenue comes the intrinsic challenge of managing a vast and complicated supply chain to ensure medical supplies are distributed correctly. The expansive healthcare network, logistics professionals and industry veterans have begun to tweak their unique technology to help alleviate common healthcare supply chain barriers in the medical industry.

Before detailing the solutions to the issues, it’s imperative to fully comprehend the most pressing logistics challenges facing the medical industry. Truly learning how tech can solve common pharma and medical supply chain problems only comes from having an understanding of what they are.

Some major challenges include cold storage shortages, supply and demand, lack of education, high delivery costs, time-sensitive merchandise and network complexity. Each of these respective roadblocks can reduce cost savings significantly and negatively impact thousands of lives depending on those supplies. In order to create a way around these unfortunate obstacles and create an ecosystem that thrives, proper technology must be involved.

How Transportation Tech Can Alleviate Complications in the Medical Industry 

1.     End-to-End Monitoring

End-to-end monitoring is a valuable tool as it provides greater transparency across the entirety of the supply chain. Visibility can identify potential issues before they become substantial problems, allowing businesses to take proactive measures to mitigate the fallout. This is particularly true with real-time monitoring, as the customer is alerted to problems as soon as they occur. This lets them respond far faster in moments when response time is of the essence.

Having real-time monitoring solutions in place across every stage of the delivery chain can reduce the probability of potential obstacles to virtually zero.

2.   Updated Carrier Scorecards

For important deliveries, you want to prioritize your best couriers. Carrier scorecards are useful tools to help solve supply chain issues by providing companies with a clear and objective way to evaluate the performance of their carriers, so being positive that these are up to date is essential. Delivery management technology often features real-time scorecards for each of your couriers.

These scorecards rank everything from completed deliveries to how many were OTIF (On Time In Full). These scorecards also allow you to work with couriers to help them achieve peak performance and motivate them to hit their goals.

 3.   Elimination of Busywork

Collecting and analyzing every piece of data for every quarterly report is time consuming and frustrating. In the medical supply industry, there’s barely a moment to spare. Slowing down to digest data is simply not the best use of time when delivery management technology can make this a thing of the past. Thanks to analytics and reporting features, data can be easily exported for reporting, data visualization, or advanced sales and marketing analytics.

The last several years have made it obvious that technology is mandatory for properly treating global health issues, and this applies in the medical supply workspace when trying to get as much done as possible. Utilizing technology and eliminating busywork is a trend that will never go out of style.

 4.   Additional Cost Savings

Inefficiency in the medical delivery industry drives up prices. A common problem is that inefficient tracking systems will cause unnecessary processing, leading to unstable prices. When working with the right tech, businesses have seen their cost savings go up as they eliminate the disorganization that results in a loss in profits. A thriving healthcare logistics system can keep incidents to a minimum, which means pricing and unnecessary returns are kept to a minimum as well.

 

The Next Steps in Healthcare Technology

The healthcare industry has a distinctive impact on humanity unlike any other. Ensuring that doctors, nurses, and patients are able to access their equipment in a timely manner without the burden of shipment delays and unforeseen hold ups is crucial to our entire society. As technology advances, the end goal is that new scientific developments will lead to a world with zero medical and pharma supply distribution challenges. Until leaders in the industry can be certain that they’ve reached this pinnacle, it must always be pursued through the development of better technology platforms.

As executives in the tech world work towards this, the best thing healthcare companies can do to assist is implement smart systems that work for them. As more medical supply chain spaces are accustomed to tech that streamlines their operations, there’s a much better chance of growing and pushing forward at a rapid pace.

 

Author Bio: Gururaj (Guru) Rao is the Chief Executive Officer of nuVizz, a leading network-based last mile delivery management & route optimization SaaS platform with a mission to connect all transportation from the First Mile to the Last Mile, and enable businesses to orchestrate the movements using state of the art AI and ML Technology. The nuVizz platform hosts more than 2000 companies, 35000+ active drivers & supports more than 50 million transactions. For more information, visit https://nuvizz.com/